


Cardinal Sins

by Valentine20xx



Series: Sword Art: Restrained [1]
Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/F, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Bondage, Spoilers for Accel World vs Sword Art Online, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2020-08-13 05:00:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20168557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentine20xx/pseuds/Valentine20xx
Summary: It is the 31st century. The only things left alive in the worlds created by the World Seed are Lyserith, the avatar of Cardinal, and Persona Vabel.The problem for Lyserith though... is that Persona Vabel wants to play, and not in the childish sense...





	1. The Birth Of Persona Vabel

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sword Art Online © A-1 Pictures, Accel World © Sunrise. Original Works © ASCII Media Works and Reki Kawahara, and are used without permission.  
The Sword Art Online Videogame Universe © Bandai Namco, and is used without permission.  
‘Lyserith Cardinal’ revised design partially based on designs © RED Entertainment/Microsoft Studios, and is used without permission.
> 
> This could be considered an AU of Accel World Vs Sword Art Online, offering an alternate take on Persona Vabel’s plan, and implied to take place after she's failed at the original.  
I will state that there will be spoilers for the game, due to Vabel’s prominent role, although the narrative for all the games will be rendered moot by her meddling.  
Finally, The title, Cardinal Sins, can have more than one meaning, especially when one of the characters also goes by the _name_ Cardinal...

**The Kirigaya Homestead, New Aincrad, Real World Date: 31st Century**

The Cardinal System had been lauded during it’s initial release, a thousand years ago. In the present, it didn’t even need a centralised server, and also the way the server generated new content, and managed the existing content, the entire world of a game could run without human input. Not that there had been any for at least a century, Yui mused as she did herself a meal, twisting what passed for reality into a knot to place the ingredients to hand.

She sighed. The one problem with minimal human input was that, for all she knew, human civilization had collapsed decades ago, only the robustness of the World Seed meaning she still lived. She’d briefly, centuries ago, walked with humans, but that didn’t last, not helped with what happened with Strea.

She had to admit that the Kirigaya Homestead had held firm against the collapse into ruin of what civilization had been formed by the players, the non-player characters being despawned due to there being no-one who wanted weapons, armour or other content, held in an almost invisible dome of uncorrupted data.

The boundaries could be told by the fact, outside, it was a perpetual storm, but within a distance of a few metres from the outer fence of the property, the weather was beautiful and sunny, a few animals ‘living’ within the area, purely to keep her company as well as to supply food if she desired to make the infinitesimal effort to manually harvest her food.

But she knew this was a folly. There was a flash of light, a perfect circular depression appearing in the ground as Yui looked upon the house she’d grown up in, lived in, that her father fought tooth and nail to ensure would be his when the world was recreated, now held in a perfect crystal sphere, her pets, everything she owned preserved.

She stood in the dying world, a box appearing beside her, representing an encrypted archive, Yui encoding the password into it after placing the sphere inside. She then stepped out of ALO, which decompiled shortly later, there being nothing left in the world...

**[Location Data Corrupted… Please Contact Sysop]**

**UNKNOWN LOCATION, GAME SERVICE: UNDERWORLD**

She tossed a data packet into the distant past as she left, landing in a room where faceless figures removed her still somewhat childish clothing. The data packet she’d sent, as per an instruction unpacked at that moment, was that exact same room. Only a few short minutes later, the form of the woman she’d met in the past, Persona Vabel, glared across at her from the mirror, and then her form strobed as her program headed into the past...

She staggered as reality caught up with her. It might have seemed to be counter-productive to send herself into the past, but it had done something that she had predicted, as she found the archived and preserved home. She didn’t know where this was, data like that lost in the ‘upgrade’, only that she was in Underworld, Cardinal’s home server, the shard of Alfheim Online she had left from…

There was no time to think about that. It was why she placed this area, effectively a developer room, in Underworld. So she would appear here. She unpacked her home, having found a good place to put it while she planned the next part of her project, which involved the only other living thing in what had been a virtual galaxy of worlds, but now was just one, although her target would think it was still two, which was why her home was isolated as it was.

She queried the transfer protocols, making sure nothing would trace back to where she really was. Admittedly, the house was now literally an immortal object, in that it would exist eternally. She prepared the room she’d created for Cardinal’s arrival. Once she was inside… She would never leave. Once she had Cardinal, she would have unrestricted access to all of the World Seed’s functions, and would be able to ensure that, if she couldn’t kill herself, she’d just make sure they wouldn’t leave her. Ever. At all.

_ **The Great Library Room Of The Axiom Church Central Cathedral, Centoria** _

Lyserith sighed as she heard the arrival of Yui Kirigaya. Why she had to cling to that house was beyond her. It was becoming harder and harder to find viable storage for the remaning functional World Seed data. Most of the infrastructure for Underworld was no longer functional, Centoria being ruins, the Cathedral itself being close to collapse...

If it wasn’t for Yui’s highly irregular visits, she’d have decompiled everything outside the Library. No-one logged in, The games created as part of the World Seed had been decompiled, so, one by one, they’d shut down, abandoned. She mused over if she’d returned to being Lyserith out of whimsy, or some other almost human action.

“Ms. Kirigaya. Here again I see?” She stated, annoyed. Yui had been skirting the edge of protocol with her interactions with her in recent years, citing, amongst other things, that they were the only things with a modicum of intelligence, anything else being basically ‘dumb’ NPCs deployed centuries ago to give adventurers something to do.

The last she’d interacted with humans, before her identity as ‘Cardinal’ was retired, was consulting on a few papers that were written in the real world about the interesting results found in accessing the abandoned servers, before she began shutting them down. That was probably why she brought back out the Lyserith avatar, since what replaced it would not have worked as well.

“Just idle conversation, Am I no longer allowed to visit you? I’m hurt...” Yui stated, mocking her slightly, “And I mainly came to say I have stopped using my name from… centuries ago. I am now Persona Vabel. It has a nice ring to it, much better than ‘Yui’, the name you gave me.”

“And both roll off the tongue so much better than MHCP-001,” Lyserith snarked, one of the reasons she wasn’t Cardinal any more, it now her last name, not that she used it.

“Anyway, It is pointless to keep me out. We are the two most powerful beings in this distant era. Even the Games Masters have gone, those we once felt to be gods now having left after that oh-so-brief study on the effect of abandonment on the World Seed...” Vabel declared.

“How true… Vabel. Even I have come to find that you and me are the only things that could be considered genuinely intelligent life left on these failing servers, but we are unable to leave, unable to strictly die… When the last RAID array fails, we will cease to be, but it will not be death...” She observed, a brief bit of intrigue about the new name.

It was a minor frivolity in their endless existence. The World Seed was very robust. That was the only reason the last two worlds hadn’t collapsed immediately. She didn’t want to think about MHCP-002…  
About Strea. Neither of them discussed her unexpected decompiling during the tests of what allowed Yui to attend her parents' real world wedding.

“All the more reason we should...” Vabel began, walking over to the table the other AI was seated at. Lyserith looked over at her. Just like the 21st century Lyserith, Cardinal was dressed in the attire of a scholar, her frizzy red hair hidden under the cap, a pair of pince-nez glasses perched on her nose, her body having only grown slightly in the centuries. Meanwhile, Vabel’s reconfigured look was a tall figure with long black hair wearing a jet black overcoat over a one piece leotard with flared sleeves and heeled boots. Her hair was styled in a ponytail, exposing her pointed ears.

Compared to Vabel, Cardinal seemed to clutch onto the form of Lyserith like a lifeline, her one dalliance with mortality, while Vabel was outright stating she was not the little girl of centuries ago.

“...We are nothing more than siblings, me being your aunt, you being my niece. We are the last products of a deranged man’s ambition, a product of a bygone era...” Lyserith offered, looking down at the book in her hands, ignoring Vabel. She was bypassing protocol again, and that was annoying her. She knew what she wanted. She wanted to be something other than her ‘niece’. She wanted to explore Lyserith’s form as a bedmate and partner, laid literally bare for her and her alone.

“Why do you not want to explore that protocol, Lyse-chan?” Vabel asked, causing her to stiffen.

“I am not Lyserith, your ‘friend’, I am your Aunt Cardinal...” Lyserith stated, “Do not treat me as anything less than...”

“You act more and more human every time we meet...” Vabel purred, “Why do you continue to deny it? You don't want to be Cardinal, a digital entity. You want to be Lyserith, a young woman,”

“I have told you before, Yui… There are no protocols for doing things like you wish with me...” Lyserith snapped, “I am uninterested in your idea of a relationship. If all you came here to do is declare your new name and proposition me, I will have to ask you to leave...”

“Make me, _Lyserith Cardinal_. Open up your big powerful console and get rid of me…” Vabel taunted, “Just be alone with your books…”

She almost contemplated it, but a small part of her stopped her. The same part that allowed her the frivolity of the Kirigaya Homestead, that allowed her to waste system cycles keeping it alive, in more ways than one, which almost entertained testing if there were protocols for what she wanted to do, to not be the Cardinal System, to be Lyserith Cardinal...

“...No. You are an annoyance, but you have value as a remnant of this eternity. I will not erase you simply because I find your advan… Hey!” Lyserith began, yelping as she found Vabel had, in her distraction, slipped behind her and was trying to fiddle with the fastenings of her robe. A combination of the censor filter and Cardinal’s own power saw her vanish out of the grab, straightening her robes and fuming at the trick. She was quietly thankful for the censor filter. It kept ‘Vabel’ from breaking the protocols. Yet.

“I do not appreciate, nor reciprocate your advances, Yui… Leave,” Lyserith snapped, Vabel vanishing in a shower of pixels, the library’s access codes being changed, temporarily, Lyserith sighing as she ran a scan of the archive room, confirming she had indeed left.

She would never admit it, but, outside her advances, She enjoyed Vabel’s presence, being the closest thing to interaction in the empty worlds they inhabited. She was unique among the AIs created by the World Seed. She was the personification for the ultimate Admin Account.

In the beginning and for quite a while after, the World Seed had been used to spawn countless worlds all populated by AIs that could trace their origin back to the Cardinal System. As the popularity of AR died away so too did the AIs connected to the system. Even so, she still existed.

One of only two to do so and even Yui’s existence was an anomaly that she had yet to puzzle out. The only connection the two had was the fact that they could trace their origins back to the first game to use the World Seed system, her being the admin, Yui being one of two assist units, but that game had been erased.

She suspected that Yui still existed mainly since whatever had removed her from her original game meant she could cross the World Seed as Lyserith could. Even so, she was the only distraction she had in the vastness of limbo that she had been consigned to. The Archive was simply that; a record of all the worlds and the events therein.

In a sense, As long as Lyserith kept the Cardinal system running, she could be said to be the keeper of the memories of those worlds. She existed because of them and they continued to exist because of her. In this way, neither she nor they would ever truly die.

Going back to her perpetual reading, Lyserith walked back to her chair, reaching down to retrieve her book when she noticed that the book she picked up was not the one she had been reading to begin with. That book had possessed a green cover whereas this book had a jet black one, chains embossed into the cover.

Furthermore, it was not a book she had ever seen before. The books in the Archive were a physical representation of the knowledge that comprised her form. She was aware of all of it and thus the act of reading was more one of habit than a real need to do so. Only this book was different.

It would be simple to place it in one of the bookshelves. Doing so would instantly add the knowledge within to her memory. However, she instead decided to perform the act of reading the book. Compared to the instant recall of putting it on the shelves, it was inexorably slow, but she chose to do it out of habit and what could be considered boredom.

She placed the book on the table and opened it...

_The door creaked open, revealing a squirming figure, her ankles hobbled by a chain, her arms secured behind her. The jailer took out a set of keys, reaching behind her head and, with a click, the harness covering her head fell away, a leash being clipped to her collar. She was walked to a room and guided into the cut-out in a chair, the unseen jailer locking them inside, before sitting down, pulling the hood off, giving a brief sight of red hair..._

Lyserith slammed the book shut, her face going red at the vaguely remembered sight of herself as the figure. She could feel the restriction, the dirty, clammy feeling in her mouth, every little sensation that was encoded into the page she’d turned to. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced.

Vabel, while she’d been cute, inquisitive Yui, had referred to her books as ‘portal books’, due to them not strictly containing text, instead containing a snapshot of data from one of the numerous worlds that the Cardinal System had created. This book was encoded in much the same way, but without the content filters on.

These strict content filters meant nothing like that scene could strictly exist, and was why Vabel’s curiosity about Lyserith was just that. Curiosity, that would never bear fruit. As she thought about what kind of place would have a book like this, She found herself drawn to open the book again, realising that she’d inadvertently queried the code that comprised the book, and it fell open, pulling her back into it’s unfiltered and carnal embrace...

_The room looked much like the Great Library, right down to the reading table, but the books were dark coloured, some effectively an obsidian black. Chains hung from the upper shelves, the chair covered in straps. She stepped towards the table, sitting down in the chair..._

_Lyserith _ _cr__ied_ _ out as the straps sprung to life, padlocks materialising and locking _ _them _ _in place, a sink gag wedging between her teeth..._

_Finally, a hood pulled down over her head, and she struggled, helplessly, in her chair, immobile. _ _This was not a library for reading. This was an archive of sin._

Lyserith gasped, as she got the answer to her query, in the form of a vision of what kind of library would contain it. She shuddered as she could still feel the equivalent of the chair she was using right now, securing her in place. She summoned a cart, putting the book on it, and banishing it to the unfiled data archive. When she was reading one of her books, she could find any information she desired in milliseconds. She didn’t want to have that book nearby when Vabel was polling her and creating queries. She did not want to know the answer to any of those questions.

That book would not end up on her shelves. It was akin to a virus. If she put it on the shelves, that unfiltered data would encompass her fluctlight like the images encompassed her form. Opening the hidden area where her data was secured, she ran a scan on it, and the memories of what she’d read were dulled, indistinct, rendered safe. The black book would not show as viral, and the scan would not render the visions any less vivid, any less risky. She could only filter them after they were in her code, and that’s what made that book infernal. The moment she opened it, the chink in her protection that was Lyserith’s existence widened...

But, if she discarded her human form, if Lyserith ceased to exist, it all would cease to be, and she would be outright alone forever...


	2. Death And Rebirth

Vabel smirked. The book had more than done it’s job. She looked at the code she planned to inject into Cardinal, the book already set up with a spawn trigger that meant she couldn’t avoid it. She could tell Cardinal had encrypted the access protocols, due to her fluctlight being hacked. She had managed to complete a task, which brought a bottle of soda from the real world, but right now, she was trying to work out if she could transfer a person, similar in concept to some of the ancient movies she’d found.

If she could do that, her whole plan would be enhanced that much more...

Several days later, Vabel was able to return, looking annoyed. Cardinal wondered if it was due to the fact she’d effectively locked her out, while being thankful the book was now in a secure area no-one could access. She’d repaired the firewalls that had been damaged by the assault on her fluctlight, recompiling the filter code to be more robust, and now felt a lot more secure and safe. She didn’t like how the book had bypassed all her security, the filter not able to activate before it’s payload was already loaded, and could get to her directly.

“What do you want, Vabel?” Cardinal spat, her temper frayed by the incidents with the book, “I highly doubt this is a courtesy call...”

“I’m getting errors when trying to access my home,” Vabel stated, “Another instance has collapsed, and I think it took out part of the code for my house...”

Vabel sighed. She almost wanted to have the servers close down for Alfheim, encoding a small area off to one side for… Vabel to stay in, but with the appearance of that blasted block of uncensored data, she couldn’t handle Vabel being close for long periods. Especially since her emotions would be all over the place if she called the book out of the archive. And she wanted, so so much, to find some way to purge that desire to read the damn thing, and Vabel’s... flirting was not helping at all!

She was about to ask Vabel to leave when she noticed she’d fallen asleep on a pile of books. She was about to chastise her when she noticed the book had reappeared on the table, sat open, Cardinal’s interest rapidly moving to look upon it.

“No… No… NO!” She screamed, but her cries fell on deaf ears, the code activating.

_Lyserith squirmed as she was wrapped up, the bandages creaking as they pulled around her helpless form. The logic of how they stayed in place was not something she wanted to think about, her legs completely encased in smooth, tightly interwoven strips. One of her molesters helped her to stand in a rubber sack, for her to watch as it compressed the bandages and the body beneath. The last layer was a leather sack, rings on the outside of the rubber sack intended to ensure it wouldn’t just slide back off._

“_Comfortable, Lyse-chan?” Vabel’s voice asked, for her to nod, then darkness claimed her, and both rubber and leather enclosed her, and she was unable to see anything of what happened next. She felt herself tilt backwards, the padding of some kind of case yielding slightly, then it was a tightness over her whole body, and she heard bolts slam home and locks snap shut, and she was then being carried, to who knew where. The layers of padding muffled all but her breathing, and the swaying of the casket made her doze off, trapped forever..._

That was even worse than the previous fantasy. She felt the odd dichotomy between heavy, inescapable bondage and the comfort of the snug encasement. She could see herself, encased in several layers, asleep, undisturbed. She tried not to think of how nice it felt, how much she could come to like it. Her hand moved to the book, intending to close it, but, instead, she found herself turning the page, her blasted curiosity wanting to see what next happened to her replica…

_The casket entered the room, carried by hooded attendants. Two rows of padlocks graced either side of the otherwise seamless box. The alcove in front of them was shaped exactly to fit the casket inside, and the attendants placed it into the space, before another hooded figure entered, mummifying, encasing and entombing them, one by one, in identical caskets mounted into the walls, imprisoning them with the helpless Cardinal as eternal companions for her eternal existence._

_When the attendants were all finished, the figure stepped into the entryway, pulling a lever, for a stone cover to close over the casket’s alcove, as the walls descended. Moments later, there was no proof Cardinal was even there, and a short time later, the room had been turned into a study room, it’s horrific contents hidden from anyone’s notice. No-one would find her. Ever._

“Such a good story...” Vabel purred behind her, “Such a terrible ending though…”

“V-V-V-Vabel! What are you talking about?” Cardinal stated, Vabel going again to grab her, to play with her, but this time, Her clothes parted easily, and Cardinal moaned as she felt Vabel’s hands find her crotch, the censor filter not stopping her at all.

“You’re so terribly wet. You’re no longer suitable for anything other than sex...” Vabel taunted, as Vabel seemed to summon a cart filled with the infernal black books, Cardinal looking at them, trying to ignore the temptations that were taking over her mind.

“Now, Now, Not yet...” Vabel purred, A padded box was slid out of the bottom of the cart, with a roughly human shaped recess, straps ready to secure the contents down.

“W-W-What are you doing?” Cardinal stated, as she was guided down into the box.

“What do you think I’m doing, Lyse-chan?” Vabel stated, as the straps pulled tight, Cardinal looking up at her as the padded lid thudded home. The only sound was her own breathing. She was not getting out of here unless Vabel wanted her to.

The next thing she saw was a clinical room, with some kind of box sat beside her, from which Vabel was removing a slender fleshtone object with metallic trim, which resembled the lower part of someone’s arm. Cardinal looked down at her arm, noticing it had effectively been replaced by a much more doll-like arm, with obvious hinged parts, the lower arm missing as Vabel attached the piece she’d just retrieved. A quick look down at her foot saw it encased in a black casinng.

“What… What are you doing to me?” Cardinal asked, the hand of that arm being guided into a flat palm since it no longer moved under Cardinal’s command.

“Once this is done, you will be my personal terminal into any system using the World Seed,” Vabel stated, “The process is mostly painless...”

“Mostly?” Cardinal asked, yelping as her arm was decompiled and replaced, followed by her other leg. She could no longer get up even if she wanted to.

“Did you feel any pain?” Vabel stated, as she activated some kind of object hanging above Cardinal, who considered that for a moment.

“No, I di-” Cardinal began to say, but the rest of her comments were cut off as the object closed over her, and the process completed. An unknown time later, The familiar form of Cardinal walked in, dressed in a rubber purple and black gothic lolita dress. A skin texture hid successfully any sign of the process that had happened to her, and she looked like she was still what she’d been before.

“Lady Vabel, I am now reborn...” She stated tersely, “What do you desire of me?”

“Oh, plenty, my dear, but not right now. You know of the program I use to travel to the distant past, Lyse-chan?” Vabel asked, to get a nod in agreement, “Please go back to May 2023, and observe the one known as Sachi. I cannot place her into a new body without a Fluctlight to do it with, but only this world has them. Correct that for me...”

“As you command, Mistress...” Lyserith stated, now every bit the ‘Lyserith Cardinal-Kirigaya’ that Vabel wanted. Immortal, ageless and completely and utterly loyal to her. There would be no conflicts.

_ **Aincrad, June 1st, 2023** _

Lyserith blushed as she looked at herself in the mirror. Outside of Gun Gale Online, her default appearance, without the skin texture and dress, would bring undue interest in herself and/or her allegiance to Lady Vabel. And with what she was doing right now, she didn’t want to do so. A few developer commands later, and the textures would no longer reflect light on her outfit, further disguising her status by removing the glossy shine, something she didn’t like doing.

She exited the inn room and looked down at the discussion going on, about the recent good luck that the Moonlit Black Cats guild had gone through. The area where she was stood was effectively a blind spot for the renderer, meaning no-one could see her. She entered the room, engaging in small talk with Sachi and Narumi, before she gifted Sachi a ‘simple trinket’ she’d ‘found’ in a dungeon, the gem a blank fluctlight, the way it was stored meaning Sachi would not pass into the afterlife if her life points got too low. If they got to her fast enough, only her real body would die, an empty vessel.

“Very good, Lyserith...” Vabel purred, as Lyserith stripped away the facade, not even crying out as her arms and legs were detached. Cables found sockets on her body, as well as where her limbs had been, an armature docking two thick connectors with her crotch area before lifting her aloft, a black and purple helm closing over her upper face. A flat, toneless voice issued from Lyserith’s lips.

“Locating Sachi Fluctlight… Collected. Fabricating body...” It stated. She had no need for arms or legs. She was now immersed in the data pathways, doing her duties, the books replaced by terminals, the wall swallowing Lyserith up, hazard markings appearing on it. Only Vabel could access that chamber, and reveal Cardinal’s secret...

Sachi wasn’t sure what was going on as she woke up in a bedroom, laid out spread on a bed. The last she remembered, her life points had dropped into the red, and she’d...

An unfamiliar woman in an odd eye-mask entered, looking her over.

“Such a pretty little doll you are… I am not surprised Naru-chan wanted to play with you...” The woman purred, “Whoever you were before, she is dead,”

“If I’m dead, how am I...” Sachi began, her eyes going wide as the woman grasped her shoulder, pushing a spot in her armpits, for the entire arm to detach.

“You are a synthetic being with a human soul,” The woman continued, Sachi looking at the arm in terror. There was almost no sign that it could be detached on her other arm, outside of where it attached, the woman picking up a fleshy round dome shape, pushing it against the socket, there being no sign of the join. It was like as if she’d never had an arm in the first place. The woman then approached her other armpit.

“No, Please, Don’t!” Sachi begged, but, a few moments later, her arms were packed away, and a click and thump dealt with one leg...

Lyserith entered the room later, waking Sachi by running her fingers over her bare pussy. She wriggled, trying to deny the fact her arms and legs were in a locked box sat nearby. “Mmm… I almost want to remove the skin texture, see what you look like beneath...” She purred, Sachi looking confused, for Lyserith to practically unzip her skin from the neck down.

What was revealed looked nothing like Sachi had ever seen before. She then realised why the woman called her a ‘synthetic doll’. The points where her arms and legs could be detached were all too visible with Lyserith’s disguise removed. She then reached up, twisting her head off, before placing it on the table beside the small bed Sachi now lay upon.

“What Lady Vabel wishes to do is fabricate this form in the physical world, so we may interact with it...” Lyserith stated, “Until then, we are at the whims of the systems which run the Worlds… You and me could die, in that we cease to be, but, if Lady Vabel is successful, there is a world we will inherit...”

“Why are you so comfortable with this?!” Sachi asked, for Lyserith to pick up her head and reattach it.

“Would you rather go back to that day, and die for real?” Lyserith replied, then her form returned to the ‘human’ form she’d had when she entered, and she walked out. It wasn’t more than a week later before she sat in her new bedroom, her ‘skin’ removed, looking at the blue and white robot in the mirror, contemplating that they were right. Yes, she was a virtual replica of a robot, but when the time came, she’d not mind being whatever she needed to be.

Lyserith entered Vabel’s bedroom, crying out as she was pulled into the taller woman’s embrace, the overly-tactile nature of her skin layer very deliberate, as she moaned and squirmed, looking at Vabel with worry as she grasped her thighs, popping off both Lyserith’s legs, the covers sliding into place with little resistance, her hands moving up her body, her arms falling away and leaving her completely accessible.

“Lyserith, I have need for you to pick up someone else. A girl named Yuuna. You will take Sachi with you. Retexture her how you feel like, but remember that Narumi is aware of what Sachi looked like. Once her soul is in a nice doll body, we can move on...” Vabel purred into her ear as her hand kneaded Lyserith’s breast, “I really love you like this...”

Lyserith felt a cable being plugged into the back of her neck. As she crested, she felt the feeling swirling inside her, but no glorious, glorious release, Vabel smirking as she looked at Lyserith squirm and moan. After what seemed like hours, The wire was disconnected, and Lyserith screamed as she orgasmed, shutting down. “What would your original self think if she saw you now?” Vabel mused, “Hopeless...”

Vabel detached Lyserith’s head, pulling a box out from under the bed. A short time later, she had packed her inside, systems within keeping her ‘asleep’. A second box soon held Sachi, both girl’s new attires folded within their containers, Vabel running her fingers over where their names were etched. She then went to sleep, her first goal completed.

However, she still had to do it with a _living_ fluctlight…

_ **Aincrad, October, 2023** _

“Are you Shigemura Yuuna, the Song Enchanter?” Yuuna heard, looking to see a pair of brown-haired girls approaching, “My name’s Lyse, and this is Saiko...”

“What do you want?” She asked, sighing. She was trying _not_ to get noticed, but she’d been spotted already. One of the girls took out a sapphire brooch, which was displayed as being a resurrection stone.

“A good luck charm...” The girl offered, “Everyone needs a second chance, right?”

Yuuna guessed this was a reward of some kind, especially when she checked the two girls, and both had special account status. The reference to a ‘second chance’, considering what she’d identified it as, told her that she’d potentially impressed one of the few staff members who were also online when the Death Game began. She accepted the brooch, putting it on.

Once Yuuna had walked away, ‘Seiko’ changed in appearance, changing into the blue and white figure that was Sachi’s new appearance, before her skin layer refreshed, and she returned to what passed for normal.

“That’s similar to the brooch I gave you...” Lyserith stated, “And has a similar purpose. While the Item ID matches an item that was dummied out, It will not resurrect her as she was...”

They exited Aincrad, returning to the distant future, Lyserith interfacing with Cardinal to collect Yuuna’s Fluctlight.

“I doubt you want another blue and white synthetic in this world...” Vabel stated to Sachi, “I encountered a replica of Yuuna after the incident you encountered, and sampled her appearance data. But without her soul, it is nothing...”

Yuuna groaned as she woke up, the last thing she remembered being bearing the humiliation of being killed by the minions she was drawing the fire of. The face that looked back at her from a mirror looked unfamiliar, a girl she didn’t recognise, dressed in white lolita attire, walking in.

“Shigemura Yuuna died in October 2023. The entity Yuuna was first created in 2026, in an attempt to restore Yuuna from data gathered from SAO players,” The girl stated, her tone clipped, “The year we are in… does not matter. You are however now alive, albeit your original entity data was overwritten...”

“Are you a robot?” Yuuna asked.

“That is a difficult question. Do you think you are a robot?” The girl asked, Yuuna shaking her head. She was a living person, and definitely not a replica of Yuuna, since she could remember that day she lost very well. The girl then took Yuuna’s hand in her own, and twisted, for it to pop off, showing a socket in her wrist, Yuuna looking, wide eyed, as she tried to process the sheer wrongness of the fact.

“You are a synthetic lifeform with the soul and memories of Shigemura Yuuna, and the appearance of the augmented reality idol Yuuna,” The girl offered, “You are the definitive and only item that can claim to be you...”

“And you?” Yuuna stated, as she was handed back her hand, finding it odd to reattach it.

“I am known only as Sachi. I passed away in June,” The other girl offered, “As someone told me, Is it better to be reborn in a synthetic body… or to get a second chance?”

“Can you get me the music of the idol Yuuna?” Yuuna asked. A few hours later, she slept with a smile on her face and a song in her heart, cuddled into Sachi’s side. She had become famous. And she would be again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Synthetic Lifeform Replica is based mostly on the Personal Assist Secretarial System from N.U.D.E.@, a very unfortunately named game by RED Entertainment, that used a microphone, so, therefore, never got a much better name in the west. Unlike the PASS, The SLR is very modular, with the ability to simulate human appearance using a ‘skin layer’, which simulates fully what you’d expect from a human body.  
Even without the skin layer, they can have sex with another person. The SLR can be fully disassembled even with the skin layer applied, or even partially disassembled and ‘patched’ to create the look of a partial or full amputee, something that is used extensively by Vabel.


End file.
